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Did the So-Called 'Russian Facebook' Hire Edward Snowden?

Edward Snowden found a tech job in Russia, and though his lawyer
isn't saying where, we have a few reasons to believe that it is VK,
a popular social network with a shaky relationship to the security
state.

Almost five months since he revealed the extent of the National
Security Agency's data dragnet, including innocent American
citizens, Snowden has been living mostly under the radar in Russia.
He came out of hiding only a couple of times to do things like
go shopping
, or
take a boat ride
. As fun and luxurious as it might have been to suddenly leave a
fantastic life in Hawaii to do almost nothing, the time has come
for him to go to work with his very valuable skills as a
government-trained hacker.

Today, Russian media reported that Snowden has been hired for a
technical support job at a "major" Russian website. His lawyer
would not say where he will be working starting next month for
security concerns. Also, that company might not have an easy time
setting up shop outside of Russia if that came out.

We can only speculate which company hired Snowden, but all signs
point to VK. Another prime candidate would be Yandex (
YNDX
), but reporters at The Verge confirmed that Yandex never even got
an application from him.

VK, formerly known as VKontakte, is Europe's largest home-grown
social network. It's popular across the Russian-speaking world and
Israel. According to MuStat, VK gets at least 8 million hits every
day. The tech press calls it Russia's answer to Facebook (
FB
), and for good reason. VK is pretty much a mirror image of the
famous social networking site, and matches just about every
function that Facebook has. Even if there wasn't an English
version, you could probably navigate this site pretty easily.

The point where Facebook and VK diverge, however, is the latter's
history of hosting pirated material. VK makes it easy to share
files, and much of what users share is pirated. On numerous
occasions, it was sued for not being vigilant enough about
preventing piracy.

Way back in July,
Minyanville's Nick Shchetko speculated
that VK would be a top candidate for Snowden's next step, among
other possibilities. A month later, VK publicly offered him a job.
Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden's Russian lawyer, said that his client
has received multiple offers, given his exceptional technical
talents.

But the peculiar character of Russia's Mark Zuckerberg might make
VK more tolerant of Snowden's high-profile history of doing
precisely what his employer tells him not to do. As the
Washington Post
reported
in May, Pavel Durov, the founder of VK, has had his own run-ins
with the security state. Durov had to go into hiding himself after
he was accused of a hit-and-run against a policeman. He is alleged
to have only grazed the officer, and there is zero evidence that
the incident in question involved Durov. Soon after a businessman
with ties to
Rosneft Oil Company
(OTCMKTS:RNFTF) , a state-run company, and President Vladimir Putin
himself, attempted a clandestine hostile takeover of the social
network. Police also confiscated VK's servers, saying that it was
part of the hit-and-run investigation. Also, in May, the site with
tens of millions of active users was briefly placed on the
government blacklist
-- a place usually reserved for child pornography and terrorism
websites.

The harassment of Durov and VK are thought to stem from the
Kremlin's fear that the popular social network will be a hub for
dissent. Indeed, after Putin's most recent questionable reelection,
it was the go-to network for young urbanites to vent. Russia
doesn't want that to grow to Cairo-like proportions.

Also, Durov, like Snowden, lists his political views as
libertarian. It is a bit ironic that Snowden lifted the veil on
government data collection on
Google
(
GOOG
),
Yahoo
(
YHOO
), and
AOL
(
AOL
) users, and finds himself working for another tech company
undergoing even worse intimidation.

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